There are two of you in my mind. One is the girl you had some chance to be: bedbound, uncommunicative, unable to thrive as you grew. But there is another other girl as well. The one you would have been without that single letter randomly altered in your DNA: perfect. All of your potential preserved, ready to unfold.
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They are songs of grief and death and the intersection of life and loss that is my permanent residence. These are the melodies I frantically return to each time I feel I have lost her again, clinging to each syllable when the strum of grief reverberates throughout my hollow body. They are the exact same words that remind me that I will always be able to find her in the deepest parts of my soul, that she will forever be a part of me.
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Guilt, the sharp-toothed animal, snakes in place of a tongue, hissing, biting, cursing, blaming. 'You should have, you must have, you did not…' The other face of imagination, uttering the same what if and if only over and over again. Ravaging my head, not letting me sleep, for fear of waking up to find her dead.
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'Not your fault.' A mantra, a song, a pleading hymn for rationality. Pounding in a head dizzy from lack of air, dizzy from this new reality. 'Not your fault. Not your fault. Not your fault.' Months out, I am still free falling. The air is still thin. The pain is still there, a knife between the ribs, the sinking feeling of the stomach as I plummet thousands of feet through the air, without any promise of landing.
Read MoreBereaved parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion, and the other side of getting through this mess called grief.
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Parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion we learn for others, having been through this mess — and see it reflected back at you, acknowledged and understood.
Thanks to photographer Xin Li and to artist Stephanie Sicore for their respective illustrations and photos.
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